international agility course

Very cool Dog Agility Blog Event on Internationalization !!

The technology available to agility competitors has increased the ability to do agility at a different level. Videos of competitors from around the world have inspired interest in worldwide agility skills. International course design is cropping up in AKC and USDAA in the form of threadles, backsides and other global sequences. USDAA has added a Master Challenge course that has many international course features which can be found in DAM Team courses as well.

My favorite course map website has international courses from the judges overseas at http://pompilio.wordpress.com/ I like to print out courses and set them up to work on the challenging pieces as well as re-number and try new sequences from the same course. My students enjoy the options and I try to embed shorter/less complicated sequences that people with young dogs can do within the harder course so that there are level appropriate sections for everyone.

Here is a course we are going to run tonight that was designed by Harald Schjelderup. He is going to be a judge at the FCI World Championships.

There are multiple options to try within this course, and I am sure I will come up with more tonight!

This is a link to a previous blog post regarding a Harald Schjelderup international jumpers course with different options to try https://ffluffy.com/2013/02/15/harald-schjelderup-agility-course/

We tried an interesting course last night by Harald Schjelderup, an international judge from NORWAY. This course is from last year at Drobak. Thanx to all of you who came out!

This is a photo with some ideas and then a summary follows.

There are a few options for handling starting with the beginning #4 – #7. Either do a serpentine, where you really have to work the send to #5 OR try 3 front crosses which means you really have to hustle your butt!

It helps the dog to know they are going to the weaves if you send and start to move away from the tunnel as they enter. Saw a lot of wide turns there. Staying with the dog on the left out of the tunnel and rear crossing the weaves might tighten the turn up even more. You can assess how well you showed the dog they were going to the weaves by how wide the turn out of the tunnel was. The wider the turn, the less info your dog had about where to go next.

A lot of dogs missed #10 due to the handlers setting a bad line out of the weaves and/or not handling #10 (don’t take it for granted).

Set up the turn at #12 so that the dog knows they are taking the correct tunnel entry (almost handle as if you were going to the chute). I tried 3 options here, handling to the #13 tunnel, handling to the off course tunnel and handling to the chute. It helped clarify how to show the dog where they are going next.

As the dog enters the chute they really need to know they are not in extension and that they should turn and look for you to get #15. Again I tried handling the off course option to the tunnel so that my dog could recognize when I was running vs decelerating at the chute entrance.